Can Anyone Please Help - Windows Monitoring

[BigBirdy]

I know that I can only expect so much support from a free, and open source solution with what appears to be a limited use base. But I would REALLY like to get up to speed on Zabbix especially for monitoring Windows servers. The support for Linux (and most other *nixes) seems great and I am only having trouble with Windows servers right now. I would love to be comfortable enough with Zabbix to recommend and deploy it on my clients sites, but at this point thats not possible until I can get some basic Windows Server monitoring active.

Here is what I tried so far, based some forum posts. But really, how is it possible that there is no adequate windows agent and templates to monitor a typical Windows server?

How can I monitor network traffic on Windows Servers?

###Windows 2003 Server:

typeperf -qx | find "Network Interface"

\Network Interface(Intel[R] PRO_1000 MT Desktop Adapter)\Bytes Total/sec
\Network Interface(MS TCP Loopback interface)\Bytes Total/sec

Many more but will use this to start with the "Bytes Total" above.

Zabbix Server (RHEL4):

###Created a new item for the existing Windows 2003 server

Type: ZABBIX agent
Key: perf_counter["\Network Interface(Intel[R] PRO_1000 MT Desktop Adapter)\Bytes Total/sec"]

Type of Information: Numeric (integer 64 bit)

Units: bps

Use Multiplier Custom Multiplier

Custom Multiplier: 8

[swaterhouse]

The reason why nic monitoring isn't built into the template is because as you can see from your output the counters are dependant on your NIC's name and not a standard like the unix world (i.e. eth0, eth1 etc).

My solution to the issue is to monitor port traffic on the the switches, it's a lot easier to setup.

What else do you think is missing from the windows template?

Personally I have added checks for disk io and disk queue length to all my servers as those are both important measurements for checking disk subsystem performance. The only other missing feature for me is checks for the standard services but that is easy to implement, i just haven't gotten around to it.

Now that we can import\export templates its up to us to contribute templates that will help everyone. I have created three already and will be adding another one later today.

[BigBirdy]

If many other monitoring solutions, like Hyperic and all the commercial ones, can create an agent which correctly identifies the hardware and services, I am sure this must be possible. Monitoring the switches is just not possible. What about environments that dont have large commercial switches? What about environments where the admins have no knowledge of SNMP, MIBS, OID's?

I am greatful for the response, and truly sympathetic to the DIY and developer approach, and I have also put in hundreds of hours on all sorts of products getting familiar with configurations, setup, customization etc, but I am trying NOT to do that for a product category which most people will expect to work somewhat "out-of-the-box".

I see great promise with Zabbix and so will keep trying to get up to speed in setting up some basic monitoring. At the very least it would be nice to see the windows agent and template automatically create, monitor and trigger the same basic services and hardware found with the Linux agents. This would be a great start.

Dont get me wrong, I am not complaining simply for the sake of complaining. I have been working with, developing and deploying Windows-based, Linux-based and various open-source solutions for more than a decade and IMHO, one of the greatest barriers for many FOSS/Linux products trying to enter into the corporate server room, is not realizing that there will be Windows admins around who will not have these "expert" skills, or the time to DIY. They would like to start something up, and have most functions working out-of-the-box. Some consider this pandering to the Windows world. I would rather see it is meeting an accepted level of user-friendliness.

[swaterhouse]

I totally agree with you. I dont really have the time either but what I lack even more is money in my budget. I like ZABBIX, leaps and bounds better than I liked my last free solution but it is far from being the "ultimate solution". In my opinion the next major push for ZABBIX should be to get the agent feature set to be a) more feature complete and b) have most features work on all supported platforms. This doesnt just apply to Windows it applies to all platforms.

As for network interface monitoring in Windows I am not sure how the other systems do it, but I agree there has to be a way. I haven't looked into WMI in a while, maybe there is something in there?

[Jeffj]

Check out http://www.snmp-informant.com/ I use there free mib on my servers to monitor the cpu, disk space, mem and network. snmp-informant is not perfect(it's free they have a commercial product , I have not tried it) but it
makes it easier to track because each servers uses the same snmp OIDs for each of the components you want to track.

Hope this helps.